8 Things to Know About Joel

Sep 10, 2017

1) Tell us a memorable story of yourself when you were a kid.

So back in high school I got into a photoshop war with one of my classmates and the results were printed and posted up all over the building. Basically we took turns photoshopping each other’s faces onto ridiculous, sometimes hideous images. This back and forth went on for a good while until my classmate decided to involve a “romantic interest” of mine in his shopped images. After this, I decided to go with the nuclear option: I shopped his face onto a literal “man-baby”, diaper and all, and printed it out onto a six foot banner. I had my best friend drive his Jeep up to the front of the building at 6 am the next day where I proudly hung it for all to see.

2) Aaron Draplin mentioned to Curiosity that even the worst agency job isn’t that bad compared to other things. Can you describe your three most interesting pre-agency jobs?

Job #1: I waited tables at Bob Evans for about 2 years and some change when I was in highschool. Not my worst job, and I would still eat there! Job #2: Kings Island games attendant. I was the guy yelling at you with a microphone while you tried to walk peacefully through the Coney Mall. The biggest highlight of this job was being interrogated behind The Racer after a fellow employee stole a bunch of “merchandise” (i.e. stuffed animals). Job #3: Third shift at a 24/7 Steak and Shake. Washing a never ending pile of dishes from 10pm-7am really puts things into perspective.

3) Tell us about your experience doing drone photography in Jamaica.

This past May I got a last minute call for a job from a close friend/collaborator. He basically needed a two person video crew to go to Jamaica to work with a Travel Agency he and his business partner were re-branding. Five days later, I was on a plane headed to Jamaica with a hilariously vague plan. One clear objective we did have though was to get some aerial footage while we were there. I had a good amount of experience with the drone at this point but sending it out into the sunset at full speed still took a bit of nerve! For another shot we had to fly the drone over a group of people and out into the bay in one smooth motion but we were losing daylight and only had enough memory left for one attempt at it. Thankfully I was able to nail it and it’s one of my favorite shots. Nothing like pressure to get the best results!

4) You have been an avid video gamer for most of your life. How does this connect to your love for animation?

I’ve been gaming for as long as I could hold a controller in my hands. Some of the earliest games I can remember playing were Disney’s Aladdin in 1993 and the Lion King game in 1994. They both had amazing production value and character animations that were on par with the movies they were based off of. The thing that set them apart from the movies though was the interactivity. For the brief moment you were playing the game, those characters felt alive, and because you could control them, they felt like they were a part of you. I really became obsessed with games and started to study/dissect them. One thing I would do was extract the animation frames directly from the games I played so that I could remix them and put them back together into little projects and animations of my own. So many sleepless nights spent troubleshooting fickle software on my parent’s underpowered Dell…

5) What is your favorite meal to cook for someone else?

I’ve gotten pretty good at cooking Tonkatsu, a Japanese dish. It’s pretty much just a fried pork cutlet but you can serve it a variety of ways. Over a bed of rice, with shredded cabbage, or as part of a larger meal such as an open face omelet (I had it this way when I visited Japan). I also have quite a few vegetarian/vegan meals in my arsenal since I spent about two and a half years or so without meat. Most people think that tofu is the only meat replacement out there but I actually prefer seitan for this. It’s a crucial ingredient to my favorite veggie recipe: seitan, leak, and onion stir-fry.

I seriously must have developed a lead belly after all my years of eating fast food because all of those things listed sound amazing right now and I would have zero regrets after eating them. You have to really get offensive to upset my stomach. Flippdaddy’s has a burger called the “Cincinnati Sunrise” which is an all beef patty topped with goetta, a fried egg, and cheese. That one did a number on me the last time I had it.

7) Speaking of super powers… which one would you have? Why?

Spider-man. ‘Nuff said.

8) What was your favorite course in college that was unrelated to your major? What did you learn that changed the way you think about the world?

That would be the “history of baseball from 1869 to 1934.” I don’t think I learned anything that changed my view of the world. I certainly learned a lot about Babe Ruth. I also learned that I’m never taking a college level survey course on baseball ever again because almost all of the test questions were about statistics (the professor had a mean streak).